


Conversations on the Train

by idrilka



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe, College, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-11
Updated: 2010-09-11
Packaged: 2017-10-11 16:03:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilka/pseuds/idrilka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Brad's bike breaks down, he's forced to take the subway to work, and during that time he most definitely doesn't develop an unhealthy obsession with a certain college student who takes the same train as Brad every day. No, really, he doesn't. College!AU (sort of).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conversations on the Train

**Author's Note:**

> After lurking in this fandom for about a year, I finally found the courage to contribute my own work. I'd like to thank [](http://noelia-g.livejournal.com/profile)[**noelia-g**](http://noelia-g.livejournal.com/), [](http://kubis.livejournal.com/profile)[**kubis**](http://kubis.livejournal.com/), [](http://lunatics-word.livejournal.com/profile)[**lunatics-word**](http://lunatics-word.livejournal.com/), [](http://mlekopijca.livejournal.com/profile)[**mlekopijca**](http://mlekopijca.livejournal.com/) and [](http://soriso.livejournal.com/profile)[**soriso**](http://soriso.livejournal.com/) for putting up with me while I was writing and complaining, listening to my ideas and rants, and their general support. ;) Also, many thanks to [](http://noelia-g.livejournal.com/profile)[**noelia-g**](http://noelia-g.livejournal.com/) for beta-reading.
> 
> Can be also read [here on livejournal](http://idrilka.livejournal.com/116570.html#cutid1).

Brad sees him every day on the subway when he goes to work and the other one goes God knows where. To the classes, probably, since the guy just looks like some fucking tree-hugging well-bred conservative momma boy who studies Shakespeare or some other guy who's been dead for centuries, goes to church every Sunday, helps old ladies across the street and should be, for all intents and purposes, a fucking waste of Brad's time.

Which is exactly why Brad can't stop watching him.

He doesn't even do that on purpose, it's just that sometimes his eyes drift involuntarily to catch a glimpse of his smile when the guy is with his friends and one of them says something funny, or to see him furrow his brow the tiniest bit when he's alone, reading some bulky volume bound in brown paper, which makes it impossible for Brad to decipher the title. The guy must really treat his books with care. He's also probably a huge nerd who reads Aristotle in his spare time like some male version of fucking Hermione Granger (yes, Brad did read his fair share of Harry Potter, having two nieces and a handful of little annoying cousins who won't shut up unless they're occupied with something does that to you).

The guy always gets off at the station near the campus and always takes the same train, so he either has a very regular schedule, or he goes to the library every morning before classes. Brad guesses it's most likely the latter. He knows he's not going to just come up to him and ask, ever.

"I hate it when I can hear your stupid emo bullshit through the closed door," Ray announces when Brad steps into the store at quarter to nine. He's always on time, which, sadly, is not something he can say about Ray Person, except for the days when Walt is in as well. On those days Ray comes to the store even earlier than Brad. "It means that you're going to be even more of a pain in our collective ass. So, what's the subway guy been up to?"

Of all the occasions Brad got epically drunk with Ray, the one when he accidentally mentioned something about the guy on the subway is the one he definitely regrets the most. He really, really should've known better than to agree to drink whatever Person concocted in his basement after hours. For all he knows, it could've been distilled fuel and he could've been poisoned, he can't explain what happened that one time in any other logical way.

"None of your fucking business."

"Aw, so he _was_ on the subway." Ray wiggles his eyebrows while Brad contemplates why he has allowed Person to live for so long. Oh, right, he's one of the best salesclerks he's ever seen and the owner seems to like him, so killing him wouldn't do Brad anything good (at least as far as his career in retail is concerned), and the owner's son seems to like him even more, although only fuck knows why. Walt is just strange like that. Maybe he was dropped on the head as a baby and his standards got all fucked up. "Brad, I hate to be the one to break it to you, because I know you could kill me in my sleep, although I also know that you wouldn't do that to me, simply because you can't live without me, but you're a sad little fucker. Also, you're so whipped it's hilarious, and you don't even know the guy's name."

Brad doesn't even grace him with a look, just goes to the back to sift through the notebooks, netbooks and desktop computers left for repair yesterday. "Ray, whatever your inbred whiskey-tango poor excuse for a brain makes you think you know, you're delusional," he says in a perfectly impassive voice.

"You wound me, Brad." Ray clutches theatrically at his chest. "You really wound me. Why would you lie to your dearest pal Ray-Ray like that? Just think about it. Your bike's as good as new, shining in the sun like dog's balls and whatnot, so you don't have to take the subway anymore and you could go back to impressing chicks with your fucking expensive machine, but you still do that. Something's up for sure, so stop fucking lying to my face, homes. Go, talk to the guy, who knows, maybe he's into tall Viking gods and you two are going to hook up, find out that you're soulmates, two halves of the same apple or whatever the fuck and be gayer than rainbows and a flock of fucking unicorns put together. Not everyone is like your whore of an ex, you know? You can't have such shitty luck forever, it's, like, karma or some other cosmic shit." Ray nods vigorously like he's convinced his words of wisdom should be written down and passed on to the next generation. Brad really hopes that Ray doesn't spawn any offspring of his own, just for humanity's sake. "Hey, Brad, do unicorns come in flocks? Or is it herds? Hey, Walt!" he yells in the general direction of the office. "Do you know if—"

"Ray, a piece of advice for today. Shut. The fuck. Up."

Whatever bullshit Ray is trying to pass for useful advice, Brad is not certainly going to talk to the guy on the subway. He's not. In fact, he's not going to take the subway anymore, at all.

* * *

  
A week later Brad still takes the subway. The guy still gets on the same train every day, always choosing the same car, so it's really easy to predict where he's going to be and well, if they both happen to like to sit in the first car, that's just a coincidence. Ray still mocks Brad, not even remotely bothered by the death glares sent his way. Sometimes Walt steps in and convinces Ray to shut his fucking filthy mouth for a moment, just to prevent bloodshed in his father's establishment. That would be bad for the store's reputation. And Ray, for the most part, actually listens to Walt—that's a nice change. Brad doubts it's going to last, though. As soon as Ray finally gets into Walt's pants, it's going to be all back to normal, because then Person won't have any reason to behave like a human being and not the buck-toothed inbred whiskey-tango moron he appears to be most of the time. Maybe Brad should really rethink what kind of people he's friends with.

On Wednesday the guy gets on the train with two other guys, steaming Styrofoam cups of whatever poor excuse for coffee they're most likely drinking in their hands. Fucking college students with their fancy iced mocha lattes or whatever the hell Starbucks invented to spoil perfectly good black coffee—Brad can't even count how many times he's been standing in line behind the likes of them, waiting for them to finish ordering something that took ages just to spell out to the barista, and with fucking hazel syrup and sprinkles on top, as if it weren't fruity enough already, just so he could order _black, large, to go_.

So on that day he watches him from time to time, crumpled in his seat a few feet away, and he almost misses it—the way one of the students touches Brad's guy (when the hell did he become _Brad's guy_?), and the way he doesn't shy away from the touch. So much for Brad's theories about a nice girlfriend from a good family with traditions to match his.

Brad unclenches his fists he didn't even realize he was clenching and casts another glance. There's just something about this guy, and he can't quite put his finger on it. Maybe it's the hair that looks like it was cropped short, but now it starts to grow out, like an act of defiance, and Brad wants to know what exactly he's trying to defy, maybe it's the way he looks at things like he could look right through them, like he would understand a lot of things that's been left unsaid, maybe it's the way he looks when he's alone and lost in a book, nibbling on his thumbnail unwittingly from time to time.

And Brad is not a creepy stalker, honestly, he's not. He's just… assessing the situation. What do they say in the army? Observe everything, admire nothing? Well, Brad admires quite a fucking lot here, if he were to be completely honest with himself.

* * *

  
"Brad, just admit it at least to yourself, if you don't wanna admit it to all of us, that you're a fucking twelve-year-old girl experiencing her first crush and developing slightly stalkerish habits, and everything's gonna be all right. Just gotta get it off your chest, homes. Come on, talk to your Ray-Ray."

"Why don't _you_ go talk to Walt and try annoying someone who's actually gonna listen to your bullshit for a while? I'm busy," says Brad from under the table, elbows deep in some poor guy's PC that has certainly seen better days. Probably about a decade ago. Brad really doesn't know what the fuck is wrong with people. Ten years is not a healthy lifespan for a computer, it belongs in a dumpster.

"Yeah, whatever, go hide under a fucking computer. Now that's just fucking mature, Brad. You wanna know what else is fucking mature?" At this point Ray is positively throwing a shit fit. Ray throws a shit fit about two times a week. Brad's used to that by now. The key is not to interrupt and try to drown Ray's bitching out, and he's going to run out of steam eventually. "I'll tell you what. Hiding like a big fat fucking coward and stalking hot students on the subway instead of asking them out and getting some. That's what you need, homes, to get laid and not pay for it for a change."

"Ray, I think you have a customer." Walt interrupts them (well, interrupts Ray, actually; Brad is there just because he hasn't mastered the art of teleportation yet) and gestures to the front of the store. "There's a girl who needs advice and you know that I don't know shit about computers, just about the paperwork." He pauses and then adds, "And Ray, behave."

Ray generally looks at Walt like he shits rainbows and glitter, and, well, Brad can't exactly blame him for this, because Walt does look like a man's (and woman's, he's not one to discriminate) wet dream, practically screaming _I'm innocent and waiting to be debauched_, so Person actually listens to him and behaves. Brad could bet that Ray wants to debauch him, and hard. And he's the one to talk about being whipped.

"But you know, Brad, Ray kinda does have a valid point," Walt says, lingering in the doorway. "You can pretend all you want, but it's not gonna go away just because you want it to. Even you're not that good. So you can hide under computers and sulk or you can do something about it. What's the worst that could happen? Okay, he could tell you to fuck off, though I think he'd phrase it more politely. And if it doesn't work out, you can always go back to riding your bike to work. It's not like you're married to the guy, he won't follow you everywhere. Just a thought."

Brad has given it more than a thought, he's given it a whole fucking philosophical treaty right inside his head, and the answer is still no.

* * *

  
Brad never sees him on his way back home, even though he always makes sure to sit in the first car, just in case, which means that the guy either finishes his classes earlier or stays up late in the library, or goes out with his friends. That's why Brad doesn't pay particular attention to the people on the subway on his way home, he just usually listens to the music and reads a book or a magazine he manages to grab from the office before he leaves.

That's why he doesn't even lift his eyes when someone asks, "Excuse me, is this seat taken?"

Brad's gaze falls on his messenger bag lying on the seat next to him. "No, it's not," he says, putting it in his lap. "There."

At this point Brad has been effectively distracted from his novel, so he finally casts a glance at his co-passenger, reaching to shove the book into his bag, and freezes in his tracks. The college guy looks at him with his huge green eyes, his hair still growing out and a bit disheveled. From up close Brad can see that he has a few freckles here and there, and his lips are full, red and just plain fucking distracting.

"You always take the eight thirteen train, right?" There must be something akin to shock on Brad's face, because the guy smiles a little, his lips curve up just the tiniest bit. "Well, you're not exactly what I'd call inconspicuous, you know? I've seen you around."

If Brad didn't know better, he'd say he's kind of shell shocked.

"I work downtown," he says, snapping out of it. "You?"

_I bet you go to college, you always get off at the station by the campus_, Brad wants to say, but then he would have to admit that he's been watching him and he's already broken his resolve not to talk to the guy in the first place. He doesn't have to make any more mistakes.

"Grad school. I'm majoring in Classics, it's my last year at the university, and I don't live on the campus, so I need to commute. I'm Nate, by the way. And you?"

"Brad."

The guy, Nate, lets out a small laugh. "Wow, you're talkative, aren't you? So, where do you work, Brad?"

"At a computer store." Brad shrugs, picking at his nail where it split. "We also provide repair services. I'm the guy you wanna see when your computer goes to shit."

"I'll bear that in mind," Nate says.

Brad would never guess the guy is just a year younger than him—he looks like he's nineteen, twenty at most, but unless he's some kind of a fucking academic prodigy, there's no way he's actually that young if he's in his last year.

"So what, you just like to randomly talk to strangers on the subway?" Brad asks after none of them says anything for a moment. Now it's Nate's turn to shrug.

"Seemed like the thing to do at the time. I hope I'm not bothering you."

So Brad's been right about at least one thing. Nate _is_ the poster boy for good breeding.

"This novel was boring as fuck anyway," Brad says, his face impassive. He didn't get his nickname, the Iceman, and his reputation for nothing.

"I'm glad to hear that at least I'm more entertaining than an extremely boring book. We all make do with what we have, right?" Nate smiles, staring straight at Brad, as if challenging him to look away. Brad holds his gaze. Fuck him if he knows what kind of game they're playing, but he can play along.

"Isn't that where you get off?" he asks when the train stops at a station. Nate looks away and takes in his surroundings.

"You would know," he says, still smiling, and maybe there's just a hint of mockery in this smile, maybe another challenge. When Brad doesn't pick up the glove, Nate stands up and walks toward the door that opens with a slight hiss. "I guess I'll see you around, then."

* * *

  
"Homes, whaddya know, the guy has bigger _cojones_ than the Iceman! I didn't think that was even possible! But I must admit, lately you've been acting like you've grown a pussy, so maybe it's just that your lady parts are showing… And I mean it with all the love and affection, Brad, you know that. It's no shame to embrace your feminine side. God didn't create you gay as a motherfucking rainbow for nothing."

Brad can feel a massive, Ray-shaped headache coming any minute now.

"Whatever you may think in that deranged brain of yours, I should probably inform you that liking dick and liking tits is not mutually exclusive, Ray. You would know, you'd fuck anything that looked at your whiskey-tango face and didn't run away screaming. It's so nice of you to uphold this fine family tradition, by the way."

"Hey, at least my mom took me to NASCAR! Your folks sent you to a fucking Hebrew school when you were a kid and then to a military school when that didn't work out and they saw that their little Brad wouldn't get to be a rabbi after all."

"I think we're getting a bit off topic here," Walt chips in from where he's seated on the desk. It's a slow day and it seems like Brad's sex life or lack thereof is the most pressing matter, which is just fucking depressing and equally pathetic. "So what did that Nate guy finally say?"

"That he'll see me around. Which means nothing, since his tree-hugging hipster boyfriend won't just magically vanish, so don't get too excited, Ray. I'm still back to whores and one night stands with random chicks. Or guys. I'm not particularly picky in that respect."

"The fuck?!" Ray throws his hands in the air, sending Pepsi rain all over the place from the opened can he's holding. "You never said anything about the subway guy being all cozy with another guy!"

"Well, it's better than him having a girlfriend, right?" Walt says in a tone that's supposed to be optimistic. "At least we know for sure he swings that way in the first place. That has to count for something."

Brad's not convinced. In fact, he doesn't like this sudden surge of interest in his love life at all. He liked it better when it was nonexistent, just like said love life, and he was left to be emotionally constipated in silence and solitude. Then he could've kept on pretending that everything was just the way it was supposed to be.

* * *

  
Nate does see him around on Monday, and this time it's only him and none of his friends. There's also no boyfriend in sight. Brad wonders if he did that on purpose. That would be taking fucked up to a whole new level—purposefully avoiding your boyfriend just to talk to a strange guy met on the subway.

Over time, he slowly learns some things about Nate—that he indeed comes from an upper-middle-class family with traditions and that he's a Republican. That he's majoring not only in Classics, but also in Public Administration and International Development, and that he apparently has the brain the size of the fucking Wikipedia. That he's a cat person rather than a dog person, but owns neither. That he lives in an apartment outside the campus with a roommate. That he likes Ovid and Vergil, but is not a great fan of Tacitus. That he reads Herodotus before sleep and admires him for his narrative talent.

Brad lets him speak, for the most part, sometimes chipping in to say something that is more personal than _I fix computers_, but it doesn't happen that often unless Nate asks specifically. And he does sometimes—asks Brad about how many siblings he has (two sisters, the same as Nate), where he grew up (California), what he likes to do in his free time (surf and ride his bike).

They keep it up for three weeks and Nate doesn't even once suggest that they take their whatever it is outside the train. Brad doesn't do anything either. Sometimes preserving the status quo is the smart thing to do, and Brad is nothing if not pretty fucking smart.

"So how come that a guy with an IQ like yours ends up at a computer store?" Nate asks one morning. "I mean, it's not exactly a place I'd imagine someone like you working at."

Brad shrugs. "I went to MIT, studied programming. Had a place waiting for me at IBM. But then shit happened, and then even more shit happened, and I had to take a year off to earn money to pay my tuition. Don't wanna be one of those hippie pot-smoking smart-ass wimps who drain their own folks for money 'cause they're too lazy to get their asses off the couch and go to work. Gotta make do. And it's the real world here, no big company is gonna hire someone without a degree, no matter how pretty fucking ninja they might be at what they do."

"And you want me to actually believe that what they pay you at the store is enough to afford the tuition at MIT? Please, I may not be a prodigy like you, but I'm not stupid."

"That's because it's just my day job." Brad grins. "When I go back home, I still have a lot of time to earn some actual money."

"I understand." Nate nods. It's always like that with him, his movements efficient, the way he words things succinct. Brad finds that oddly fascinating. "You feel like you need to make your own way in the world. I get it," he says. "I've been considering joining the Marines myself, just to have something that's completely mine, from start to finish. To somehow make a difference."

"So why haven't you? Too much of a pansy-ass liberal dick-sucking hippie to do it?" Brad knows it's in fact a bluff the minute he says that, he doesn't really mean a word of it.

"I don't know. It just didn't feel right for some reason. I really have no idea how to explain that."

"My parents sent me to a military school when I was a teenager. If I hadn't gone to MIT, I'd probably be somewhere in Buttfuck, Iraq right now with our troops. Who knows, if you'd joined, too, maybe we'd have met there."

"And now we'll never know." There's this smile on Nate's face, the one Brad can't exactly place, and it makes him curious.

The train stops at the station by the campus. Nate picks up his bag and leaves.

* * *

  
"What the fuck is this?" Ray asks, eyeing a massive stack of papers lying on the desk by the counter.

"This, Ray, is what ordinary employees unlike yourself like to call paperwork. It needs to be done every once in a while in order to keep things in their proper place." Brad doesn't even glance from his seat in the corner of the room where he's unscrewing a laptop brought earlier for repair. He'd seen Walt dumping the paperwork unceremoniously on Ray's desk earlier, so he knows exactly what that heap of chopped down and recycled rainforest entails.

"But it's Walt's job to do that!" Right now, Ray sounds like a petulant five-year-old. Walt just shoots him a look and pointedly raises an eyebrow. Brad thinks that as far as Ray is concerned, Walt should try to bribe him to do his paperwork with blowjobs, would be more effective.

"Ray, need I inform you that in order for Walt to be able to do his job, first you need to do yours?" Brad thinks that it's sometimes easier to reason with his nieces than it is with Person. The difference is, his nieces are four and six respectively. "So stop your bitching and get on it. It won't disappear or do itself just from looking at it very convincingly. And next time do your goddamn paperwork on time, Ray, and quit being such a fucking pain in the ass."

"And what crawled up your ass and died? What, your boyfriend's still not putting out?" Ray snipes, approaching the stack of papers with caution, like he's handling a crate of grenades that might go off at any second.

"Ray."

"Okay, okay, okay, shutting the fuck up, I get it. Just sayin', homes, you need to get laid, and fast, or else you're going to go all _Wanted_ on our asses and I really don't wanna get hit in the face with a keyboard, that would be just unbecoming. Besides, you're no Angelina Jolie, either."

Brad wants to say that he's seen that movie, too, and he's pretty sure it wasn't Angelina hitting a guy across the face with a keyboard, but there's really no point arguing with Ray when he's right in the middle of a rant, so he just closes his eyes for a fraction of a second and then he's business as usual.

He doesn't think about the fact that this morning Nate was with that guy again, the one he'd seen him with before, and he didn't even come to introduce his friend (boyfriend, whatever) and talk with Brad, and he most certainly doesn't think about how it feels a bit too much like betrayal. It's ridiculous, Brad knows that, because Nate has no obligations to him whatsoever and is free to do as he pleases, but it's a fucking shitty feeling to finally realize that in the end Brad is just a convenient way for Nate to kill some time on his way to classes, nothing more, like an unread newspaper he sometimes finds on the train, left by someone in a hurry.

* * *

  
Brad isn't even sure how he winds up at some bar that evening, nursing a beer and nibbling on peanuts laid out in a small bowl on the counter, glancing at the huge plasma tv hanging on the wall to his right every now and then. There's a basketball game going and the Lakers are getting their asses whipped hard. It's just fucking disgraceful.

It's not a particularly busy night and the bartender keeps coming back to where Brad's seated, refilling his glass before it has the chance to get completely empty. The fifth time she comes back, she's showing much more cleavage than before and she smiles at him like she wants to show him lots of other things, and Brad knows that he's being hit on when he sees it.

He likes girls who know what they want and don't hesitate to just go for it.

Trish tells him that her shift ends in an hour and that afterwards they could go back to her place if he's interested. She's a redhead and her eyes are most definitely not green, so Brad says yes.

He fucks her on the dining table at her small apartment, then once again in her bed, and then he's gone before sunrise. He doesn't leave her his number or a note. All they did was fuck and it was fun while it lasted, they were both aware of that. Brad doesn't have to fear he's going to break Trish's heart. He doesn't have to fear she's going to break his, either.

* * *

  
Nate looks apologetic the next day, and apologetic Nate looks a bit like a kicked puppy, his eyes wide and clear and green, rimmed red from too much studying and not enough sleep; his sharp, white teeth are worrying his lower lip the whole time, and it's just downright distracting.

"Brad."

Nate nods instead of saying hello and sits next to Brad, on the seat he always saves for him, just in case. Brad doesn't even know how this ritual started. He knows, however, how this whole thing started—one guy looking at another guy on the subway, a fantasy that was never supposed to be realized. And it would be so much easier if Nate would have turned out to be uninteresting, bland and plain boring. Instead, Nate is fascinating, smart, dry-witted and capable of forming and defending his own opinions, and this is something Brad certainly admires in people.

Brad doesn't know what to do, probably for the first time in his life. Normally, he likes it when things go according to some sort of a plan, and Nate, well, Nate just happened to him all of a sudden, and this is something Brad has no idea how to deal with. How to deal with himself like this.

By the time he realizes he didn't even acknowledge Nate's presence in any way, Nate is already talking.

"Sorry about yesterday," he says, "it's just that Gabriel—"

"Don't. You have no reason to apologize." Brad's determined to stop him before Nate says something that's going to leave Brad no choice but to terminate whatever semblance of a friendship, relationship, whatever the fuck they might have at the moment. He would never ever play the part of the third one. There are some rules Brad considers sacred and this is one of them—never fuck around with a person who fucks someone else on a daily basis, whores not included.

Nate shakes his head. "I think I owe you an explanation, that's all. And an apology."

Brad starts to grow exasperated, because what the fuck, and how can Nate not get it?

"Look, Nate, you don't need to apologize or explain anything, since I don't own you, or our conversations, or this fucking train for that matter. It'd be without a doubt much less shitty if I did. I wouldn't want to interrupt you and your boyfriend anyway," he says, looking Nate straight in the eye. He's not a coward, he won't be.

Nate lets out a breathy laugh. "Boyfriend? Gabriel's not my boyfriend, Brad, I assure you. He's just a friend."

Brad knows Nate's lying, or at least not telling the whole truth, but it's the same thing in his books. And Brad hates being lied to.

"You don't have to tell me anything, you know that, right?" Brad's jaw is set, his fists clenched like he wants to attack, to lash out and break something before that something inside of him breaks, and he's jealous, he's fucking insanely jealous of a guy he hardly knows and who's never gonna know how Brad feels, because he won't tell him about that, ever. He's such a fucking masochist, maybe Ray's right after all. "So when you actually do, at least try not to lie to me."

Nate looks like he's been slapped. "Excuse me?" he asks in an incredulous tone.

"You know what?" Brad raises from his seat just as the train starts to slow down. "Whatever. Fuck it."

He walks the rest of the way to the store and comes in more than fifteen minutes late for the first time ever.

Person just looks at him and doesn't say a word, and then Brad finds a cup of strong black coffee with no sugar on his desk. In such moments Brad knows exactly why he's friends with Ray.

* * *

  
"Your sister called," Ray says when Brad decides that it's safe for the world to interact with him again and finally comes out of his cave. The light is a bit too bright and hurts his eyes.

"Why would my sister call you, of all people?"

"Oh, I don't know." Ray taps his chin with his finger like he's pondering all the possible answers to that question. "Maybe it's 'cause you turned your goddamn phone off and she couldn't reach you, so she decided to harass my innocent self instead? Fuck yeah, that might be it! Seriously, though, Brad. I know your sister is scary, but you can't avoid her forever. Besides, she says she has a layover in Boston and wants to come visit."

"Fuck," Brad mutters under his breath.

Ray is kind of right—Katherine can be scary as hell when she wants to, and she's probably the only person apart from Brad's mother who sees right through him. But where Judith Colbert relents and backs off, Katherine just can't give anything a rest.

"I told her you'd call her back. And you better do, or she's gonna rip my balls off for not yelling at you until you just fucking gave up and called, homes."

"Fine, I'll call her."

"You do that, Brad, or else I'm gonna hunt you down if she goes after me. I'm not sure if she's ever heard of _don't kill the messenger_. Probably not, so, you know…"

Brad closes his eyes and counts to ten. "Ray. I already told you I'd call her, so shut the fuck up."

In the end Brad does call his sister, and Katherine does rip him a new one for about half an hour for not calling more often, ignoring her and about a dozen other things he's guilty of, at least in her opinion. He doesn't even try to argue, because with his sister any resistance is completely fucking futile.

"I'm going to be in Boston on Monday, I'm having a layover on my way to Toronto. We'll arrange for a lunch somewhere, I haven't seen you in ages and I think we have a lot to talk about." In Katherine-speak it means nothing other than _our mother wanted me to spy on you, since you wouldn't fucking talk to her like a normal human being_.

Brad loves his mother, he really does—even if she's not the woman who gave birth to him; that never mattered for Brad anyway, he's always been a firm believer in the idea that people who raised you and loved you and cared for you had more right to call themselves your parents than people whose sole qualification for that title would be a drunken one night stand and a broken condom that resulted in a baby neither of those people wanted to begin with. So yes, he loves his mother, but sometimes she seems to forget that he's a fucking grown man and there's just some shit he doesn't want to share with anyone and that he has to deal with all by himself.

He rides his bike on Monday, since he doesn't want to be late from his lunch break any more than necessary. And if he avoids seeing Nate that way, well, that's just an added bonus.

He spends his morning working on a Mac that turns out to be most definitely dead and watching Ray and Walt cruising each other. It would be so much easier if they just admitted they're gay for each other and fucked already. If Brad has to witness one more show of coy looks from beneath their eyelashes (and what the fuck, it's not some fucking middle school for liberal pussies, for God's sake) and their retarded methods of flirting, he might just suggest that himself. They most likely wouldn't mind. Brad also knows for a fact that Ray kissed Walt once already, while they were both drunk and high on weed that one of Ray's shady friends scored somewhere, but probably neither of them remembers that little make-out session right in the middle of Brad's living room. Maybe he should remind them of it sometime in the future if they don't unfuck themselves eventually. And what a fucking affront to his warrior spirit would that be—playing a fucking Yenta for those two morons who wouldn't figure their way out of a paper bag, at least as far as their sex life is concerned.

So he's actually relieved when he has to go out for his lunch with Katherine. What he's somehow managed to forget is that Katherine is a force of nature. Or at least how much of a force of nature she can be.

"You don't write, you don't call," she says instead of a _hello_.

"Nice to see you too," Brad says, taking his place at a table at some fancy restaurant his sister insisted on going to. As long as she pays for the lunch, that's fine by him. "How are the girls? Tell them I'm gonna take them out for a ride next time I visit. And we're not gonna exceed the speed limit, if that's what you're worried about. I like speed, but I'm not retarded."

"They're fine. And you're not taking them out for a ride on that thing you call a motorbike. They wish you'd call more often, though. They talk about you a lot, and I think one of Mia's friends has a crush on you. She's seen the pictures, Mia showed them to her some time ago and told her about you, extensively."

"Sorry to disappoint her, but I'm not into braids."

Katherine makes a disgusted face.

"What's wrong, Brad?" she asks once they ordered. "And cut the crap, please. We all know that you don't call too often and that's fine, none of us is being kept on a tight leash and we're all grown-ups, but that's just ridiculous. It hasn't been this bad since Jessica left you, so what the hell?"

Brad just shakes his head. "So what, mom really did send you to spy on me, didn't she?"

"Mom's worried sick, Brad." The expression on Katherine's face is dead serious. "We all know you weren't in the best shape after Jess, and she's imagining a whole shitload of worst case scenarios right now. So whatever it is that you're going through, don't be a stranger, okay? Or else I'm gonna kick your ass so hard you're gonna visit space completely free of charge. And without an air-tight suit."

"She's got nothing to worry about. I've been busy lately, that's all. I have a big commission that I'm working on after hours and—"

"And Ray tells me there's a guy." He's going to kill Ray. With a spoon. Or some other equally blunt kitchen utensil, as long as the death itself is long and painful. "So I think there _is_ a legitimate reason for her to worry. Want to answer my previous question again, now?"

"There's no—"

"Brad?"

He freezes in his place and turns around to look at Nate, who is standing by their table, shifting his eyes back and forth between Brad and Katherine. Oh, and there's the fucking not-boyfriend, Gabriel or whichever fucking archangel he was named after, hidden partly behind Nate.

"Nate."

There's silence after that and Brad desperately tries to think of something, anything to say, because he knows that if he doesn't, Nate's going to start talking and that's going to end in a disaster, but it seems like the words fail him this one time.

"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend, Brad?" Katherine asks and judging by the look on her face, she's already put the pieces together. Brad is positively and thoroughly fucked.

"Katherine, this is Nate. Nate, this is my sister, Katherine."

"Pleased to meet you," Nate says, always the fucking poster boy for good manners. "I'm sorry, I should be going. You're obviously busy. We'll talk some other time."

When the door closes after Nate and Gabriel, Katherine turns to stare right at Brad, raising her eyebrows. "And what the fuck was that?"

"That was none of your business."

Katherine frowns at first, but then she just gets that sad look, and in this moment she resembles her mother, their mother so much it's uncanny, and Brad can't help but feel a pang of guilt, like a punch to his gut. His mother does that sometimes to him, and now it turns out that she passed her secret on to Katherine.

"You know what?" she starts. "You may pretend to be all tough and try to bullshit me with that no-one-can-touch-me façade, but I know you, and I'm not buying it. I'm not asking you to lay your soul open before me, but I need to know this one. Is that guy going to be Jess Two Point Zero? Because that was this guy, am I right? So? Is he?"

"No. I'm all squared away, if that's what you're asking. He's not gonna be the next Jess."

He almost believes that himself.

* * *

  
Ray and Walt finally get their shit together on Tuesday following that disaster of a day with Katherine and Nate, and lunch, and the talk.

It is otherwise a very ordinary Tuesday, with a rather big delivery that Brad needs to sign for, so he spends a lovely hour listening to Poke, the guy who works at the Hewlett Packard, ranting on white privilege and racial inequality while Brad checks if everything is the way it's supposed to be, carefully examining each and every item and ticking off the little boxes on the sheet of paper in front of him. He knows better than to hurry—Ray told him stories about the guy who worked at the store before Brad and the Great Hard Drives Fuck-Up, and Brad is nothing if not thorough in everything he does.

When he comes back to the store, carrying a handful of heavy boxes that are supposed to be put on display, he sees a tall, handsome guy standing in the door leading to Walt's office and very obviously hitting on him. Brad has no idea who the guy is and what he even wants with Walt in the first place, but the flirting is there all right. Ray looks like he's about to murder someone with his bare hands. And he's the one to talk about Brad being clueless and hopeless. Fucking hilarious.

He ignores Person's berserk mode for the time being and decides to do all that job that needs to be done himself, since he doesn't think he can expect of Ray anything resembling productivity anytime soon. He's probably too busy thinking up a good scenario that includes murdering someone, getting rid of the body and not getting caught in the process. Or ever, for that matter. Brad wishes him luck with that.

The guy is gone ten minutes later, but Ray doesn't storm into Walt's office right away. Brad must admit he's rather surprised, since he expected a shit fit of epic proportions. Instead, Ray goes to the back and then Brad hears the sounds of objects being thrown around. Or maybe that's just Person's idea of spring cleaning. Brad can only hope that it's not going to be him who's going to have to explain to Mrs. Papakostas why her netbook mysteriously ended up with its screen broken.

There's a customer looking at their assortment of graphic cards, but Brad takes one glance at the back room and decides to take care of the guy himself. There's no point in dragging Ray away from his act of destruction.

After Person is finally done (and he at least had the common fucking sense not to throw anything _expensive_), he stands in the exact same spot the guy who tried to hit on Walt was standing in, crosses his hands and looks at Walt with a stern look.

"So, who was the guy?" he asks and his tone could be classified as conversational if it weren't for the fact that should looks kill, there would be a corpse lying on the floor, slowly cooling down. (It probably wouldn't be Walt's, though, since it's _Walt_ they're talking about and there are some things Ray just wouldn't do to him, ever, and killing him certainly makes the list.)

"A guy from the advertising agency." Walt shrugs and throws a folder on the desk. "Dad thinks of expanding the business and wants an ad in local papers."

"Well, that's certainly good to know, cause here I thought he was paid to look like some fucking yuppie liberal dicksuck and fucking hit on innocent people, distracting them from their fucking work they were supposed to be doing." Ray stops for a second. "Cause you do realize that he was fucking hitting on you, right? I mean, what the fuck was that?"

"What the hell are you talking about, Ray?"

"What am I talking about? What am I _talking_ about, homes? He should keep his fucking filthy hands to himself and not try to sexually harass you in the workplace, homes, that's what I'm talking about! It's fucking mobbing or some shit! You could report that to the police. In fact, I think you should report that to the police! That was just not on!"

Walt stares at Person for a moment, probably trying to decide for himself if Ray is being serious or if he's just full of shit. "Didn't know you could be so fucking jealous, Ray. What the fuck? Maybe you should piss around me, too, just to mark your territory?"

"I didn't know you were such a fucking little pervert, but if you're into that kinda thing, I think I can arrange that," Ray says suggestively, completely unbothered by Walt's outburst.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Ray, listen to yourself." Walt runs a hand down his face. "You're such a fucking moron, why do I even put up with you in the first place?"

"That's 'cause you fucking love your Ray-Ray, homes!"

"Or maybe 'cause I'm mentally challenged."

"Or maybe 'cause you really fucking love me." Ray wiggles his eyebrows.

Walt sighs. "Yeah, that might be it, too."

Ray stops in his tracks and actually closes his mouth, then opens it again. "Oh," he says. "Oh. You for real? Or are you fucking with me just because you can?"

"No, I'm not fucking with you," Walt says, stopping to think about the words he's about to utter, like he wants to be completely sure he means every single one of them. "At least I don't think I am. So no, not fucking with you, I guess."

Walt smiles, a bit shy, and for the first time ever Brad sees Ray who has been rendered completely speechless. He doesn't even make a crude joke about the other way Walt could be fucking with him, and this tells Brad more than any elaborate speech could.

* * *

  
Brad doesn't take the subway for the next few days, observes Ray and Walt, who are constantly eyefucking (though he probably should be thanking Walt that they are only eyefucking, since he was the one who insisted that there was still something called an appropriate behavior in the workplace), and he most certainly doesn't think about Nate.

On Wednesday, he locks himself at his apartment and works until he sees the sun rising, coloring the sky purple and yellow. All that time he positively doesn't think about Nate.

On Thursday, he goes to a bar and ends up at some guy's place, trying to enjoy the blowjob he's receiving and not to think about Nate's lips. He doesn't say his name when he comes, but he thinks it.

* * *

  
The next time he sees him, it's Friday and even Brad knows he's avoided Nate long enough. He takes the 8.13 train, sits in the first car and waits. Nate doesn't get on the train at the usual station. Brad waits and keeps a seat for Nate anyway, like he always does, trying not to think about the slight possibility that Nate might have decided that he didn't want to see Brad anymore. Maybe jealous and possessive is not really his type.

The train goes past the campus and Brad knows that Nate's just not going to show up, whatever the reason. He did say that he and Brad would talk, but he might have changed his mind. The thing is, Brad wouldn't even blame him. He's used to that by now, people coming and going, leaving him with a bitter aftertaste in his mouth. Maybe that's the taste of things that weren't meant to be after all. Brad knows it a bit too well.

At the store, it's just him and Ray, and the day is rather slow, so Brad takes off earlier than usual and somehow ends up at the subway station by the campus. He hasn't even realized he was walking.

There's Gabriel at the station, Brad sees the fucker from his place by the pillar, but there's no Nate in sight. The crowd is getting bigger by the minute, people rushing in from all sides, finishing off their non-fat lattes or looking for their iPods just to be able to convey _leave me the fuck alone_ more effectively, and then there's the unmistakable screech of wheels against the rails growing louder and louder while the train arrives at the station and finally comes to a halt, drowning everything in a deafening noise. Brad decides that he might as well sit this one out and wait for the next one. The fact that they closed the Harvard library exactly three minutes ago, like they do every Friday, is purely coincidental. (Brad might have done some research on that particular subject, though.)

The platform empties out and then there's only Brad and a drunk, probably homeless man dozing off by the wall a few feet from where Brad is standing. Brad doesn't mind him, even if he's snoring a bit, thus making it difficult to gather thoughts.

He expects Nate, if he's still on the campus (and Brad could bet he is), to show up sooner rather than later. What he doesn't expect is that he turns out to be completely unprepared to face him.

This time Brad sees him approaching—Nate comes down the stairs and looks around for a moment; there's a confused look on his face when he finally spots Brad, like he isn't quite sure if what he's seeing is true or maybe it's just his imagination fucking with him.

"Brad?" Nate sounds really surprised, like he didn't think Brad would actively seek him out. Well, to be completely fair, Brad didn't think so either.

"You weren't on the train this morning." He tries not to sound too accusatory. "And at the restaurant you said we would talk later. It's later, isn't it? So let's talk. What was it that you wanted to tell me?"

"I wasn't happy with the way we left things the last time, but that was not the time and the place." Nate looks at him like he's searching for something in Brad's face, but Brad has no idea what he expects to find there, so he keeps his expression carefully blank. "The thing is, I don't know what I did wrong, Brad. And if I don't know what I did wrong, I can't fix it, so give me something to work with, that's all I'm asking of you. I thought we—" He shakes his head, closing his eyes for a moment. "I don't even know anymore. I didn't lie to you about anything. Why would I do that? Why do you _think_ I did that?"

Brad wants to run, just take off and run, run for miles until he's drenched in his own sweat and too exhausted to think or feel, barely able to catch his breath, inhaling air in huge, desperate gasps. Running is a bit like riding a bike—just you, the ground beneath your feet and the feeling like nothing can touch you. Maybe then he wouldn't have to give answers he doesn't really have.

"I have no idea what you know or you think you know, Brad," Nate continues, "but I have never lied to you."

Brad looks at Nate's lips and it takes an enormous amount of strong will on his part not to lean in and kiss him right there, right now.

"But you didn't tell the truth either," he says instead. "And I get it, I really do. Despite what you may think of me, I'm not dense. You're entitled to whatever relationships you want to pursue and I'm not going to stand in your way. So if you want me to leave, or if you want to leave, just say so, that's all it takes."

"What?" Nate asks breathily, letting out a shaky laughter that has nothing to do with amusement. "What the fuck is your problem, Brad?" He looks him straight in the eye and takes a step closer, crowding Brad's personal space.

"There's no problem." Brad feels trapped and a bit intimidated, and this doesn't happen too often.

"Bullshit." Nate looks disappointed and angry at the same time. "You wouldn't act like that if somebody didn't fuck you up at some point. Who fucked you up, Brad?"

"Nobody— It's complicated."

"That's very well, then, since I'll have you know that I'm an Ivy League student and therefore it wouldn't be too far-fetched to assume that I am, indeed, capable of grasping complex problems. So by all means, feel free to enlighten me," he says, keeping his voice sharp. "Brad, just let it out," he adds, and this time he sounds much softer.

Brad hesitates for a bit, but maybe Nate needs to hear it, maybe he needs to hear it as much as Brad needs him to listen and decide if he wants to continue with their strange relationship, whatever its nature may be. He's giving him an easy way out—if this doesn't work out, for whatever reason, Nate can just choose another car when he gets on the train the next time and he won't have to see Brad ever again.

"I had a girlfriend, we were together since junior high." He tries not to speak too fast and fails. It's like he wants to tell the story as quickly as possible, as if he were ripping off a band-aid. He doesn't look at Nate at all. "Then, all of a sudden, in the middle of my midterms I get an invitation to her wedding. It was… unexpected, to say the least. And what do you know, I even got to be my best friend's best man." He laughs and it surprises him how bitter he sounds. "We're still friends, I visit them from time to time, see what my life could look like." He makes a pause that lasts just for a heartbeat. "It's great to have friends, isn't it?"

His face muscles hurt from smiling, but the smile doesn't quite reach his eyes and Brad can tell Nate sees right through his bullshit, though even if he does, he doesn't say anything, just nods, and that's better than all that more or less genuine sympathy Brad usually gets whenever he tells this story.

"I understand," Nate says after a moment of silence. They didn't even realize that the train they were waiting for has already left the station. "But I also need you to trust me. To know that you _can_ trust me. At least try, Brad, or this is not going to work at all."

Brad's expression remains blank, but the urge to run grows stronger and stronger by the second. Fuck, he shouldn't have started this whole thing in the first place, he should've told Nate to politely fuck off the minute he approached him on the train, he should've gone back to riding his bike to work, and then Nate would be nothing more than a masturbatory fantasy. Hell, he wouldn't even be _Nate_, since Brad wouldn't know his name to begin with. But he did all those fucking moronic things, like talking to him, and taking the subway just to look at him, and most importantly falling for Nate fucking Fick. He thought that he would be able to control it, but he obviously isn't, and now this is such a fucking mess, and Brad has no idea what to do except run away.

Nate's hand on his forearm keeps him in his place, though, grounds him in reality, gives him something solid to focus on—the gentle yet firm touch, Nate's long fingers curling around Brad's arm, the heat Nate's hand is radiating. Brad's whole body is painfully tense, like a taut string, because if he doesn't control each and every muscle in his body, it might betray him and do something impossibly stupid, like kissing Nate, touching him in a way that would leave no doubts as to Brad's intentions.

And he can't do that. He just can't.

"I'm sorry," he says, not looking at Nate and trying to extract himself from his grip, "I should probably—"

"Do you want to take a walk?"

The question is so completely out of the blue that it actually makes Brad turn his eyes to Nate.

"What?"

"I said, do you want to take a walk?" Nate repeats patiently. "It's nice out there and I think I could use some fresh air. And after the walk I might even throw in an extra beer or two. So? You up for it?"

Brad knows he's probably making a huge fucking mistake and that he's going to live to regret it, but he's also a fucking masochist and he wants this—wants Nate—so fucking much it hurts, so at this point, anything he can get, he's willing to take. Even if it's just a walk and a beer. Especially if it's just a walk and a beer. It's safer that way.

"Yeah, I could take a walk," he says.

* * *

  
It ends up being exactly that, nothing more, nothing less—a walk and a beer at some pub where the bartender tries to be more Irish than James fucking Joyce and fails miserably, his impressive heritage diluted by two generations of ancestors who grew up and lived their whole lives in the States. His fake accent is a fucking disaster and Brad cringes every time the guy opens his mouth.

His second beer is about to become nothing more than a faded memory when Nate's phone rings and it takes him some time to fish it out of his messenger bag, so when he finally does find it, whoever was calling has already disconnected. Nate doesn't look like he intends to call back.

"Aren't you going to—" Brad makes a vague gesture in the general direction of the phone.

"It can wait." Nate shrugs and takes a gulp of his Guinness. "If it was something important, Gabriel wouldn't have just given up. He can be an awful nag when he wants to."

Brad clenches his fingers around his glass, nearly breaking it into pieces. "Maybe you _should_ call him back."

(It seems that he's refined sabotaging himself into an art.)

"I told you that—" Nate trails off and then gives Brad a questioning look. He looks a bit exasperated. "What is it about Gabriel that sets you off so much? Every time I do so much as mention him, you get all tense and defensive. I don't get it."

"You wouldn't."

Brad taps his fingers against the glass covered with perspiration. There's something in Nate's eyes, and he thinks that maybe if he pushes long enough and hard enough, Nate is just going to leave, and that would be probably for the best. Brad is still torn between that part of himself which desperately wants to know Nate, to _have_ Nate, and the other one, which wants to first and foremost spare Brad yet another heartbreak and disappointment, the one that screams _leave right the fuck now or make_ him _leave_.

"And what was that supposed to mean?" Nate asks incredulously. "I thought we were having an actual conversation, but it seems I've been mistaken. Why the fuck won't you just talk to me, Brad? It would be so much easier if you could actually tell me what's bothering you. Then I wouldn't have to make blind guesses, and guess what, with you, I don't even know where to start."

Brad sets the glass he was playing with on the table. "You lied about him. Or at least you didn't tell the whole truth."

"What?"

"When I asked you if you two were together."

"And I told you we're not. And that's true. So please, stop seeing things that aren't there." Nate looks angry, his jaw set, his lips tightened, his eyes colder than usual. "You want the whole truth? We considered getting together at some point, long time ago, fucked around a bit and decided to remain friends. End of story. At the time, however, I couldn't see how the hell that was relevant to your question. I still can't see how that's relevant to your question, since you obviously would prefer to hide behind your raised walls of suspicion and hurt rather than come out and allow yourself to get what you want. What the fuck do you even want, Brad? Because I know what _I_ want. I want you to fucking talk to me. I don't need to have _everything_ spelled out for me, but something would be nice."

He sighs and slumps back in his chair. In that moment, Nate looks drained and tired more than anything else, as if this tirade left him completely empty.

"And I really don't want to fight anymore." He shakes his head and then rubs his eyes. "I thought we were friends, or at least we were starting to become something more than casual acquaintances who talked on the subway just to kill some time. So I don't want to fight with you when there's no reason to."

Friends. Not exactly what Brad wanted, not even remotely what he wanted, but he could settle for that. How could he not settle for that if it was Nate offering?

"We were," he says, glancing at Nate who still looks exhausted and now maybe just a little bit sad. "We are. Friends. If that is what you want."

"No, Brad," Nate says, and he thinks for a split second that he's going to suffocate, the ability to breathe gone, his throat closing off, constricting painfully, but then Nate continues and Brad can breathe again. "What do _you_ want? Because out of the two of us, I'm not the one who's not made himself clear."

In that moment Brad doesn't think, doesn't calculate, doesn't stop to consider the consequences, just leans in and kisses Nate—the kiss is chaste, their lips barely touch, but Brad's mouth pulses with heat and he feels like his whole body is burning up.

"Clear enough for you?" he asks.

Everything's out there now, laid bare in the open, and Brad has never felt so exposed in his entire life. He looks at Nate who is terrifyingly silent and in that moment he just knows that this kiss was the single fucking greatest mistake he's ever made.

This time he doesn't wait for an answer, if there's going to be an answer to begin with, he actually listens to his instincts and runs. He hopes Nate won't mind settling the tab.

He makes it as far as the sidewalk outside the pub—he's leaning against the wall, breathing hard, raindrops dripping from his chin (when did it start to rain?), when he feels a hand closing around his wrist and yanking him into a narrow, dark alley at the back of the building. It's completely empty at this time of night and poorly lit, but Brad sees Nate's face clearly—they're only inches apart.

"You could've waited for the answer, you know," Nate says with a small smile, just the corners of his mouth tugging up slightly, and Brad isn't sure if he's mocking or just teasing. "Because the answer would've been _yes_. Clear enough for me."

The kiss that comes after is all tongue and teeth, it's messy, it's a bit tacky, considering how cliché this whole thing is, what with a torrential downpour soaking them to the bone and everything, and it's absolutely perfect.

"Come on," Nate says with his lips against Brad's mouth. "My roommate is out of town for the weekend, and I'm asking. Come with me, Brad."

And Brad does.

They run all the way to the station, until they're hidden from the heavy rain, soaking wet and trying to catch their breath. Once they do, Nate kisses Brad again, just because he can, and Brad lets him.

The train arrives three minutes later.

* * *

  
Nate's place is even smaller than Brad's humble abode—a tiny room at the end of a narrow hall, filled with books from top to bottom (there are shelves on every accessible vertical surface, hundreds and hundreds of volumes crammed one right next to the other); a kitchenette opening onto the living room space and a bathroom so ridiculously small that Brad must be extra careful not to knock anything down while he's washing his hands.

He feels too big for this apartment, like he's crowding it with his presence—and he would sit down if it weren't for the fact that he's still dripping wet and doesn't want to ruin the couch. It suffered enough already, judging from the looks of it.

"Want a beer?" Nate asks, emerging from his room where he's changed into dry clothes, and opens the fridge to pull out two bottles of Budweiser. Brad fucking hates Budweiser, Nate should know that. Brad told him that himself. "Or maybe not," Nate retracts, looking at the label. So he _does_ remember. Something inside of Brad twists and turns a bit, and he gets this funny feeling he can't quite name.

"Sorry, I don't have anything else, not even some leftover vodka from Alex's last party. So it's either Budweiser or—"

"Budweiser it is." So Brad may fucking hate Budweiser, but he could sure as hell use a drink right now.

Nate hands him the beer and goes to sit on the couch, expecting Brad to follow, but Brad doesn't join him, still hung up on his wet clothes and the worn couch. Nate must notice Brad's hesitation, because he gives him a questioning look.

"Is there something wrong?" he asks.

"Your couch. Wouldn't want to ruin it any more than it already is," Brad says jokingly, shrugging.

"Right, sorry." Nate takes in the miserable state of Brad's clothing and then he's up and running, fetching Brad a fresh towel. It's soft and smells nice, like fabric softener and also a bit like Nate. Brad inhales deeper than he usually would as he dries off his hair. "Do you want to borrow some clothes? They might be a bit tight, but they should fit all the same."

Nate doesn't even wait for an answer, he just goes into his room and comes back with grey sweatpants and a Harvard t-shirt. Brad changes quickly, and the clothes are a bit snug, but he can manage. When he comes out of the bathroom, Nate looks at him with a playful expression and adds, "And leave the couch alone, I'll have you know that it's extremely comfortable and I happen to love it. So don't even try to insult it."

Brad snorts. "Duly noted," he says, nodding; then he sits down and reaches for his beer, and what do you know, the couch really _is_ that comfortable. He gives Nate a look, and Nate smiles knowingly in response, smug bastard.

"Told you," he says.

They drink for a moment in silence (and the Budweiser is fucking disgusting as usual), when Brad realizes that he's almost managed to forget why exactly Nate invited him here in the first place. It's so easy—the companionable silence, the occasional remarks—that Brad is afraid to destroy what they have at the moment, but then Nate accidentally spills some beer and when his tongue chases after the droplets, Brad finds himself unable to tear his eyes off Nate's lips.

He kisses Nate over their half-finished beer, and this time it's slow and deliberate, like Brad wants to map the inside of Nate's mouth and commit it to his memory, so that he can remember even if (_when_) it ends. At some point (he's not entirely sure when, exactly, because the time-space continuum seems a bit fuzzy afterwards) Nate takes the bottle from Brad's hand to put it away on the table and then straddles him, licking his lips, now obscenely red from the kisses, gazing at Brad with a slightly hazy look in his eyes, and Jesus fucking Christ, this must be the hottest thing Brad's ever seen.

"Fuck," he half-moans in a hoarse voice when Nate lightly scrapes his teeth over the skin of Brad's neck, soothing the faint, throbbing sensation with his tongue while his hands sneak under the hem of Brad's t-shirt, tracing the sharp lines of his muscles, exploring the new territory still hidden from his eyes.

Hands tangled in Nate's hair, Brad pulls him in for another kiss, more heated and intense than before, because now that he has him, he just can't get enough of this, of Nate, and he needs more, he needs it so desperately that it feels like drowning. He can barely breathe.

"Hey," Nate whispers against his lips, "easy there. We have time."

They just kiss for a while, nothing more, but it's enough—hot, open-mouthed kisses that leave Brad hard and drive him insane, the way Nate's tongue slides against his, the way he catches Brad's lower lip with his teeth, leaving indentations that begin to itch when they break apart to take a breath and the cool air hits his flushed skin.

"The shirt," Nate pants out between kisses, "it needs to go."

He yanks Brad's shirt off and throws it on the floor before leaning in and kissing him again. There's a hand on Brad's chest that travels down his body, leaving a hot, burning trail in its wake until it reaches the waistband of his pants, teasing, torturing, the fingertips slipping under the elastic just to brush the skin there and retreat, and Brad feels like he's going to explode any second now. He grinds his teeth and closes his eyes for a moment, trying to regain his focus, but then Nate slides down his body, taking off Brad's pants along with his underwear as he licks his lips, looking up at Brad with a dirty look in his eyes, and Jesus fucking Christ, if he keeps this up, Brad is going to come right the fuck now, no touching involved, and that would be just plain pathetic.

"Look at me, Brad," Nate says, even though he doesn't really have to, because Brad can't tear his eyes off him anyway, watching as his mouth closes around him, hot and red and swollen and fuck, fuck, it's suddenly too much, this hot, burning sensation of Nate's lips that leaves him crazy, so Brad closes his eyes, tangles his fingers in Nate's hair, and tries not to come too soon. He knows he's fighting a losing battle the moment Nate does something with his tongue and Brad sees white flashes under his eyelids; it's too close, too soon—he tugs at Nate's hair, but Nate doesn't pull back, just speeds up, taking him even deeper, and then Brad comes with his eyes closed and his mouth slightly open, but he doesn't make a sound, just thinks, _Natenatenate_, and it's a bit like sinking into the depth of the ocean, the waves closing over his head.

When he finally looks at Nate, he's wiping a smudge of come from the corner of his mouth and then he licks his finger, and it's the hottest, most obscene thing Brad could possibly imagine. He can see that Nate is hard is his jeans, and when he realizes that it's him who did this, that he's the reason why Nate is breathing hard and his eyes look glossy, he feels lightheaded and exhilarated.

"Come here," he says, pulling Nate in for a kiss, tasting himself on his tongue. It never felt that good before.

Nate's shirt comes off moments later, revealing pale, freckled skin and defined muscles, and Brad wants to kiss every inch of exposed flesh, trace the collarbone with his tongue and feel the hard bone beneath the soft skin. He knows he will never see anything as beautiful as Nate in that moment.

"Bed," he whispers, his voice hoarse, and then he's being led to the bedroom. The bed is unmade and Brad pushes Nate onto it, pinning him to the mattress with one hand, kissing, hard and deep, as he unbuttons his jeans with the other.

Nate writhes under him, muttering a string of obscenities Brad wouldn't even suspect him of being capable of _thinking_ in the first place, and he gasps breathlessly when Brad takes him in his mouth, arching his neck, but his eyes stay open, observing Brad with a blissed-out expression.

Brad looks up, takes in the acres of exposed, muscular flesh, the long expanse of Nate's neck, the strong tendons straining under his skin as he tries to maintain control, and more than anything, he wants to see him lose it, wants to _make_ him lose it, so he sucks a bit harder, takes him a bit deeper, ignoring the ache in his jaw, and drinks in the sight of Nate coming undone. He could look at him like this for hours.

* * *

  
He wakes up just before sunrise and is fully awake the second he opens his eyes, perfectly aware of his surroundings and Nate sleeping right beside him, breathing steadily, his face halfway stuffed in the pillow, his mouth slightly open. It would be so easy to lean over him to kiss the nape of his neck and then slide downwards, peppering the line of his spine with kisses, right down to the curve of his ass (and what a great ass it is).

But Brad needs to think, and he can't do that with Nate around. He needs to go, at least for now (and if he were to be completely honest with himself, he's not sure if he wants to stick around for the morning after, because he really has no idea what to expect—it happened so fast, so unexpectedly, they weren't exactly thinking clearly last night (the beer certainly helped with that), and, frankly, he doesn't know what would scare him more at the moment—the fact that Nate might have second thoughts about this whole thing between them, or the fact that he might have no second thoughts whatsoever).

He goes to the bathroom to retrieve his clothes, which are fortunately dry by now, even if a bit rough and stiff, and puts them on as quietly as he can. For a moment he considers leaving a note, but then thinks better of it. This whole thing is tacky enough as it is. And what would he write anyway? _Need to think this over, thanks for the best blowjob of my life_? That seems hardly appropriate.

When he steps back into the living room area, there's a woman sitting at the table with a mug in her hands. She looks at him and raises an eyebrow.

"So, you must be Brad," she says in a foreign accent—Irish or maybe Scottish, Brad can't quite tell—and she doesn't seem overly impressed. "I'm Alex." Brad wants to say that he expected her to be, well, a guy, but she beats him to it. "Yes, I'm a girl," she says, rolling her eyes. "Yes, I'm Nate's roommate. Yes, I was supposed to be gone for the weekend, but my parents had another idea in mind. Now, moving on. Has anyone told you recently that you're an idiot, Brad?"

She reaches around to loosen the bun she keeps her dreadlocks in.

"What?" Brad blinks, because maybe he's still dreaming after all, and he's suddenly found himself in some bizarre universe in which random people insult him in some British accent at six in the morning like it's totally socially acceptable to do that.

"You're going to just pick up your shit and sneak out, aren't you?" she asks and takes a sip of whatever she's drinking. Tea, it seems, since Brad can't smell coffee, and he _can_ smell coffee even from afar.

"And this is your business how exactly?"

"It's not, but it doesn't change the fact that you're an idiot." Alex shrugs, leaving Brad half annoyed and half impressed. It looks like Nate's roommate doesn't take shit from anybody and Brad can certainly appreciate that quality in a person, but when this attitude is directed towards him at some fucking ass o'clock, he tends to not take it well. "Just… give him the benefit of a doubt, will you? I'm fucking sick of listening to what he has to say about you, and believe me, there _is_ such thing as enough, so maybe if you go back there and fuck his brains out, he'll finally shut up."

She seems to be totally non-nonplussed by this early-morning encounter and Brad thinks that maybe she's one of those people who don't get fazed by just about anything. He, on the other hand, needs copious amounts of caffeine if he's expected to carry on with this conversation, and he can already feel a massive headache coming.

"And hey, he really likes you, you know," she continues, "though I've got absolutely no idea why exactly. So get your arse back to his room and don't be such a fucking coward. Nate's a good guy, trust me. He won't fuck you over if that's what you're worried about."

Brad thinks about Nate, sleeping peacefully, blissfully unaware of the turmoil inside of Brad, thinks about Nate's warm body hidden underneath the covers and his green eyes that would look at him blearily, and maybe about a smile, dreamy and genuine, just for him, and for once, he actually listens.

* * *

  
When he wakes up for the second time that morning, it's late, much later than he ever allows himself to sleep. There's sunshine streaming through the window and Brad squints. Beside him, Nate stirs in his sleep and then opens his eyes.

"Hi," he says, smiling so brightly that the sun might just as well hide in shame. His voice is raspy from sleep and he rubs his eyes absentmindedly. "You're still here." Nate reaches out as if to make sure that Brad's not just a wishful hallucination. "I had a dream, and in that dream you left."

He has no idea how thin the barrier between a dream and the reality is sometimes.

"Do you have somewhere to be?" Nate asks after a moment of silence, pulling Brad in for a kiss. It's lazy and a bit sloppy, like Nate is still half asleep inside and doesn't fully control what his body does, but Brad doesn't mind in the slightest.

"No, I have Saturdays free." Brad's face hovers inches from Nate's and he can still feel the heat that Nate's sleep-warm body is radiating. "Why?"

"Just figuring out if we can lie in and do absolutely nothing like I planned."

Brad snorts. "You actually _plan_ doing nothing? That kind of defeats the purpose of being spontaneous and lazy, don't you think?" Nate shrugs. "Figures." Brad shakes his head, smiling, and then mouths at Nate's jaw, looking for that spot he discovered last night that causes Nate to make an absolutely filthy sound in the back of his throat. "One more thing," he says in between kisses, "your roommate came back early. I woke up at dawn and went to grab some water," an easy lie, his voice doesn't waver the tiniest bit, "and there she was, in the middle of your living room. Nice of you to mention that Alex is not a guy, by the way."

Nate laughs, throwing his head back, and Brad feels the urge to catalogue his reactions and store them somewhere deep inside his mind. Then he would know what he should do to make him laugh like that more often.

Jesus, Ray was right. He's so whipped, and the worst thing is, in this moment, he doesn't even mind.

"Everyone does that," Nate says, still smiling. "Just makes an assumption that since my roommate's name is Alex, it must be a guy. She says it was amusing the first half a dozen times or so. Now, not so much. But you're still alive and I'm just going to assume that I don't have a female corpse lying in the middle of my living room right now, so that bodes well for the future."

It doesn't escape Brad's attention that Nate says _future_ like it's the most obvious thing under the sun that there is going to be a future in which the two of them are still present in each other's lives.

When they finally get out of the bed, it's past noon, and Nate makes them pancakes while Brad is in what passes for a shower in these parts.

"How do you live in a place so fucking small? You're not exactly a midget, you know, and it's a miracle you don't have bruises all over your body from crashing into various inanimate objects all over your so called 'apartment'," Brad says, complete with the air-quotes and everything.

Nate shrugs. He does that a lot, Brad noticed. "I learned to make do, I suppose."

Brad knows that his parents are loaded, he googled them and what do you know, it turned out that Mr. and Mrs. Fick could sleep on money if they wanted to, but their son apparently likes to live in an apartment the size of a fucking doghouse and wear jeans and t-shirts that have never even seen a designer label anywhere near them. Maybe that's his own act of defiance, Brad thinks, with his hair growing beyond what's considered a respectable haircut, and the apartment, and the clothes.

He remembers that one conversation they once had, about Nate wanting to live his own life, not his family's life or his parents' life. Maybe that's the way he makes his statement—this is me, these are my choices and my way of dealing with their consequences.

Brad wonders, briefly, if Nate's sexual orientation was also an issue, but he doesn't ask.

Alex emerges from her room half an hour after they finish their breakfast, lunch, brunch or whatever the hell that was, and the bags under her eyes are less noticeable than they were when Brad saw her for the first time.

"Still here, I see," she says, giving Brad a pointed look. "Sorry for ruining your weekend, Nate, but my old man felt it would be the perfect time to start rehashing on what a bloody disappointment I am to him personally and to my whole family in general, so I didn't even stick to hear the end of it, just packed my shit and came back, fuck him very much. I didn't sign up for that pile of bollocks when I decided to be the bigger person and finally go there. And they wonder why I don't drop by more often. Well, that's a fucking good laugh right there, don't you think?"

Brad decides that he might be starting to like her after all. He's always liked people who didn't let others treat them as doormats and who were able to say _fuck you_ loud and clear when they had to.

"It's his loss, really." Nate gives her a small, sad smile. "Coffee?"

"No, thanks, I prefer to wave my British flag proudly and go with some earl grey," she says, rummaging around a cupboard in search of her tea.

"I'm afraid we've run out of milk, though," Nate offers, tearing the remnants of his last pancake in half and lifting one small piece to his mouth, "so if you didn't stock the fridge on your way home—"

"At five fucking thirty in the sodding morning?" She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. "Are you a complete nutter or just sleep deprived? Anyway, never mind, I'll manage."

"So," Nate starts with a small smile, shifting his attention back to Brad when Alex busies herself with her tea, "what do you want to do today?"

* * *

  
They end up doing nothing in particular—they go for a long walk and don't hold hands (it's not some fucking chick flick movie, for God's sake), they stop by a family-run Italian restaurant when it's time for dinner and don't act out the scene from _Lady and the Tramp_ (it's not some goddamn fairytale, either) and end up back at Nate's place, watching reruns of _Firefly_. Nate has _opinions_ about people who cancel such fucking ninja tv shows. Brad is impressed—not only Nate has a great taste when it comes to tv shows, he also knows what tv shows are to begin with. He didn't expect that from a Classics major, but then again, it's Nate. That explains a lot.

It's just a bit too easy, though, the familiarity of it all, the way Nate seems completely comfortable with him here, and Brad subconsciously expects that all too familiar sensation that rejection brings each and every time, like a punch to his gut. When it doesn't come, when Nate doesn't turn to say, _Thanks for everything, but you should go now_, Brad realizes that he has no idea what to do, now that he still has Nate by his side, biting at his thumbnail and watching as the mudders sing _The Ballad of Jayne Cobb_, a small smile playing on his lips.

He's not used to people staying.

* * *

  
"Brad, this little thing you carry in your pocket, called cell phone? You carry it for a fucking reason."

The second Brad steps into the store, Ray is there and he shoves him, hard. There are levels of _pissed off_ some people don't even know about, and Person is quickly approaching the critical stage, otherwise he'd know that you don't just shove Brad Colbert and expect to still be allowed the luxury of breathing through a straight nose.

"It's so that people who care about you can contact you if needed and make sure that you're not, oh, let's say, dead, lying on your bathroom floor in your own puke or some shit. And I fucking hate your voicemail right now. With vengeance. Where the _fuck_ have you been the whole weekend?! I left you a fucking shitload of messages, and you didn't even call me back, you ungrateful motherfucker. And don't think that if you die next time, I'm going to fucking look for your rotting corpse or even care, because I won't!"

"Well, good morning to you too, Ray." Brad navigates past hurricane Person and heads to the back to stow his shit and start being a productive employer. Ray should probably consider taking notes, since his workplace ethic is clearly lacking these days. Too focused on checking out Walt's ass to pay attention to anything else. "While yes, I am aware of how cell phones work and what is their general purpose, they can also be turned off if the owner doesn't want to be disturbed in any way by people such as yourself, Ray. I know it may come to you as a shock, but you're not at the center of my fucking existence and sometimes I can really manage without you and even succeed at not getting killed in the process."

Brad doesn't even have it in him to be truly annoyed, since he knows that Ray genuinely cares, no matter how misconceived his acts of concern and affection may sometimes be, and he appreciates that, even if it doesn't always show (or most of the time, for that matter).

"Ray, calm down," he finally says. "I'm fine. Everything's fine. I didn't take a bottle of Prozac and wash it down with vodka, if that's what you think happened, nor did I go and spend all my money on whores. I was with Nate. And I'm fine."

Ray eyes him suspiciously. "Do I need to find him and give him the speech?"

"No, Ray, you don't need to give him the speech." Brad just sighs and rolls his eyes. "I've got this one covered."

* * *

  
He sees Nate on the 8.13 train next morning—a safe, familiar routine they both know inside out, but now there's a ghost of a smile playing on Nate's lips as he sits a bit closer than usual, leaning more casually against Brad's arm, breathing into the crook of his neck when he turns to look at him, and Brad understands that there's nothing safe or familiar about it anymore.

Sometimes change can be good.

The thing is, he's still not convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that this is one of those times, and he still expects it all to go to hell at the most unexpected moment, pulling the rug from under his feet. He _wants_ to trust Nate implicitly, because in some inexplicable way he knows that he can, that if there's someone in this world (or at least in his small microcosm of people and places) whom he can trust with everything, it's Nate, but he still can't bring himself to shake off this uneasy feeling he gets whenever he thinks of this thing between them, and he hates himself for that a little.

And then Nate kisses him right before he gets off at his station, just a brief touch of lips against Brad's dry mouth, and Brad thinks that maybe, just maybe he could take that leap of faith after all.

* * *

  
Katherine calls just as Brad is about to head home and then out to meet Nate, who says that if he's to spend one more minute translating Cicero, he's going to choke the closest available person, and he actually likes his roommate, so he would rather see her alive than dead, thank you very much.

"Mom told me you called yesterday," she says, and Brad just sighs inwardly, because he knows what's going to come next. "And you didn't even hurl derisive comments at everything and everyone you could think of for the whole time. You didn't even insult _Ray_. Is everything all right?"

"Could you make up your fucking mind once and for all?" Brad snarls at her. "I don't call, it's bad. I call, it's still bad. So please, could you enlighten me as to what the fuck do you expect of me, exactly?"

"And that's my brother I know and love," Katherine mocks. "Seriously, though, Brad, how have you been? And when are you going to come home? The girls miss you, you know. We all do. We know you want to be independent and that's why you can't afford to miss work, and I know that California is on the other side of the country, but you haven't been home for over a year. It's mom's birthday soon. Maybe you could come."

Brad knows he should, he knows that he wants to. He just hopes that when he sees his mother for the first time in over a year, he won't have to see the disappointment in her eyes.

"I'll try," he says, and it's an honest answer. "Right now, though, I'm running late, I should've been out of here about five minutes ago. I'll call you back, we'll talk."

"Like hell you will." Katherine snorts, then sighs. "Okay, go, then. And remember to think about what I said."

Brad nods, then realizes that she can't see him and breathes into the phone, "I will."

Nate notices that Brad is more silent than usual just after they order and Nate finishes telling him what a tremendous pain in the ass Cicero's _De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum_ is, exactly.

"Brad? Did something happen?" he asks, his eyes searching Brad's face, as if he expects to find an answer there, maybe a clue. (To everyone else, Brad's expression can be impenetrable when he wants to, but Nate is somehow able to read him more easily than other people, and it's more frightening than Brad could ever imagine. With Nate, his defenses just don't work, for the most part, no matter how hard he might try, and that leaves him with nowhere to hide.)

"Everything's fine." Brad knows he's going to get called on this, but he still can try to keep Nate away from all the messed-up things that are his and only his to deal with.

"Bullshit," Nate says, his voice sharp as a string, looking Brad straight in the eyes.

"It's nothing you should worry about." One more try. Nate frowns. Wrong, again.

"I don't know how fucked-up your relationship was, exactly, but let me tell you that it in the world of sane people, it doesn't work that way." His words are crisp, his shoulders tense, and he looks mildly disappointed. "At least with me, it doesn't. So cut the crap, Brad. If it's private, if you don't want to tell me, that's fine, I respect your privacy. But don't bullshit me and pretend that everything's just peachy. And I also think you should know that you _can_ talk to me if you want to. I'm not going to run. You can't scare me."

Brad forces his throat to stop hurting as he swallows.

He doesn't know why Nate is so fucking stubborn when it comes to him, why he's so damn insistent on staying.

"So, about that thing that you weren't going to tell me…"

"It's just some family stuff I need to deal with. Maybe I'll have to fly to California next month. I haven't seen them in a while."

Nate just nods and takes a swig of his beer. "Do you want to come over or would you rather have some time alone?" he asks after they sit in silence for a few moments, nursing their beers.

Brad shakes his head, smiling slightly. "No, I can come over."

It's their unspoken agreement that if they spend the night together, they always go back to Nate's place. Brad doesn't like to think about the fact that he hasn't offered to take Nate back to his own apartment simply because then he couldn't leave in the middle of the night without saying goodbye if he had to. (He still wants to be prepared for all possible contingencies, even though he knows, on some level, how fucked up that is, exactly.)

* * *

  
The first time he doesn't feel the urge to run, run as far as he possibly can and then some more just to be sure that Nate doesn't have the chance to leave him first, it's a little more than three weeks after their first night together, when he wakes up at three in the morning just to see Nate trashing around on the bed beside him, murmuring something completely incomprehensible in his sleep; then his voice rises to a helpless moan, his moves become even more frantic and in the moonlight coming through the window Brad can see that Nate's eyes are shifting rapidly under his fluttering eyelids.

"Nate," he whispers, trying to get him to snap out of this, but Nate doesn't wake up. "Nate," Brad repeats, shaking his shoulders, more firmly this time, and Nate awakes with a start, his breathing erratic as he gasps for air, his eyes still seeing the remnants of his dream carved under his eyelids.

He still trembles as Brad pushes his hair back from his forehead with one hand, gripping Nate's forearm with the other to help him calm down, to ground him in reality, and it's the first time Brad allows himself to think of something that quite possibly feels like love, even if he doesn't say it out loud. The thing that surprises him the most is the fact that this revelation doesn't bring the familiar need to run. And what do you know, maybe what he feels for Nate is in the end more powerful than all that hurt and sense of betrayal he's been harboring for months, years, even. Who would've thought.

Now all he wants to do is stay.

* * *

  
Brad runs every morning before work—he enjoys those little moments of peace and solitude, when there's only him, his iPod and the path beneath his feet. And he always runs alone.

So when one day Nate tells him that he, too, likes to run before his classes and Brad casually proposes that if he wants to, they can run together, it surprises him more than it does Nate.

Alex, who's sitting in her chair with a steaming mug in her hands, going through some notes, just shakes her head when she sees them leaving the apartment at six thirty in the morning.

"Enjoy the rain," she says. "It's bloody freezing out there, too, but that's nothing surprising, I guess. You know, since April is the cruelest month and all that."

"Fucking English majors, throwing Eliot at you even at some ass o'clock," Brad snorts derisively, but it's mostly just for show; he genuinely likes Alex, and that's really saying something, since, as Ray claims, Brad Colbert has low tolerance for people in general.

The weather is indeed goddamn awful, and Brad finds himself longing for the warmer, clearer days without the rain getting into his eyes, obscuring his vision, and his fingers leaving him with the impression that they're going to fall off any minute now.

He also finds out that he doesn't mind running with Nate—they don't talk, just run side by side, setting a steady pace that's neither too slow nor too fast, their bodies falling in sync after a while. By the time they're back at Nate's apartment, they're both breathing hard and drenched to the bone, their sweat mixing with the pouring rain. A hot shower helps Brad regain feeling in his fingers and toes, and he stands under the spray for so long that Nate eventually starts banging on the bathroom door and yells at Brad not to use up all the hot water. Brad comes out of the shower five minutes later, his hair still damp, and he grins.

"I'll make you a deal," he says, still smiling smugly as he leans against the door, not letting Nate in just yet. "If you go in there and it turns out that I indeed used up all the hot water, I'm going to blow you as a way of compensation before we get out of here. What do you say?"

"And what if there's still enough hot water for me to take a shower?" Nate asks, narrowing his eyes, as if he's calculating, but there's a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, threatening to break out.

Brad ends up blowing him anyway. He also ends up being half an hour late for work. Who would've thought that Nate would turn out to be bad influence.

"I'm beginning to think that this 'Nate' doesn't even exist," Ray tells Walt as he hops to sit on his desk, not paying any attention to the papers he crumples or throws to the floor in the process, or to Brad, who organizes the games section and can see and hear everything. "I mean, he's been fucking him for almost a month now, and we haven't even seen the guy. What if Brad has finally lost it and this 'Nate'," he makes a show of pronouncing his name, with the air-quotes and everything, "is just a highly attractive yet completely nonexistent product of his fucked-up subconscious? Like an imaginary fuck-buddy or some shit. I'm telling you, baby, something's just not on."

"Or maybe Brad just wants to take it slow and Nate's not in a hurry, either. You know it's been… hard for him in that department lately, so maybe that's actually a good thing."

Ray doesn't look convinced. "Yeah, tell that to the doctor when we're admitting him to a mental institution."

"Ray," Brad decides to finally interrupt Person, because God only knows how far he's going to go this time, "you _are_ aware of the fact that I can hear you perfectly, right? Besides, if Nate's just a figment of my imagination, my sister must be mental, too, since she's most certainly seen him as well. And do you really want to question Katherine's sanity? Or maybe you'd like to ask her personally? Because you know that can be arranged."

"Fuck you, Brad Colbert," Ray says slowly, getting off the desk. "That was a low blow. You know how I feel about your older sister. Not on, homes, not on."

Brad grins. Mission accomplished.

"Besides, you're going to meet him soon. If you're not too busy fucking each other's brains out on Saturday evening, that is. He wants to meet you, too, although God only knows why anyone would willingly become acquainted with you, Ray. Walt is another story."

"You wound me, Brad." Ray feigns hurt. "So, we finally get to meet the mysterious Nathaniel Fick. I take it you've been telling him what an awesome couple of friends you have, right? I bet we're gonna take to each other immediately and grow to be one fucking happy queer family. Fuck yeah, that's gonna be awesome."

"Ray," Brad warns, "if the words _double dating_ so much as cross your mind, I'll disembowel you with a spoon while you sleep and drape your guts all over that shithole you call an apartment. Got it?"

Ray rolls his eyes. "Jesus, Brad, why must you be so bitchy? And what does it take to remove that stick you have wedged so far up your ass that even your hotass boyfriend can't feel it when he fucks you?"

Walt makes a face. "Christ, could you be any more disgusting?"

Ray throws his hands in the air, flailing madly. "What?! What the fuck did I do again?"

Walt just looks at Brad above Ray's head, giving him that look which says _I'll explain that to him later, possibly in detail_. Sometimes Brad feels like they're taking care of a particularly difficult, particularly loud and particularly crude child. Other times, though, it seems that Ray is the voice of reason around here, which is equally hilarious and scary, all things considered.

* * *

  
Brad doesn't see Nate on Wednesday and Thursday at all—he says he has a very important essay due on Friday and he's going to spend his whole time buried in the books anyway, writing and revising. He even takes an earlier train, quite possibly arriving at the library even before the librarians, and he sends Brad a text not to wait for him in the afternoon, since even he doesn't know how long it's going to take him to finish for the day. When Brad texts him, asking why he hasn't started on the essay earlier, like he always does (yet another piece of trivia from their conversations on the train), Nate replies that he was a bit preoccupied with something else.

_and what was that?_, Brad types. He doesn't wait for the answer too long, and it's just one word, _YOU_.

It sounds angry, or at least irritated, the caps yelling at Brad from the screen like a reproach, and he can't help but wonder if Nate would have to stay up all night catching up on his schoolwork if Brad wasn't there to distract him, drag him away from what should be most important for Nate at the moment.

He wonders if he'll be able to walk away (now that he's realized he wants Nate more than anything) if he sees that being with him is standing in the way of Nate's success. Brad's not stupid, he knows that Nate was born to achieve great things, and he likes to think that he'll be capable of gathering the strength required to leave him if that's what it's going to take for Nate to live up to his full potential.

On Thursday, after he comes home from the store, he's still up to his elbows in work that needs to be done, private commissions that pay way better than what he earns at his day job, but it does nothing to distract him from his thoughts, since it's mostly mindless programming he can do while sleeping and not make even one mistake in the code in the process, he's that good. He misses his classes at MIT, they at least presented him with some sort of a challenge every once in a while, but he's nearly managed to save enough money to afford to go back to the university in the fall, complete his degree. Nate will be finished with his studies in the summer if (when, there's no _if_ in this matter) he finishes and defends his theses (plural, and both probably equally brilliant) in time, and he'll most likely want to move to some other city, maybe to another state.

Funny, how everything ends up revolving around Nate lately.

By the time Brad's finished with his most urgent commission, it's already past three, but he doesn't feel like going to sleep, so he spends the next hour reading _Ender's Game_, until he can barely keep his eyes open, before finally falling asleep. His sleep is fitful and full of bad dreams he's never going to tell about to anyone.

He's woken up by the sound of something hard hitting the floor at the apartment directly above him—the sound repeats a few times, Brad looks at the clock, which tells him that it's quarter past six, groans and then remembers that there's a young couple living at the apartment in question, and they have a baby, a boy, Brad thinks. Fucking babies and their fucking inability to sleep in the morning. The goddamn hellspawn is probably sitting in his crib right now, throwing his toys around and laughing at Brad's misery.

Brad takes another glance at the clock, mulls it over for a moment and then decides that, since there's no chance in hell he'll be allowed to go back to sleep by that little minion of Satan, he can just as well go for a long run and pick up a cup of good, strong coffee for Nate on his way. Brad knows he will still be up, proofreading his papers, most likely.

He gets there at quarter to seven, having almost bitten the barista's head off for taking her sweet time while the waiting line grew longer and longer with every passing moment, but his mission has been accomplished despite the girl's best efforts, so he brings with him a Styrofoam coaster holding two cups of black coffee, one with added sugar, two packets.

Brad knocks on the door sharply and waits for a moment, listening to the quiet rustling sounds on the other side. He expects to see Nate wearing his glasses, with his hair in a total disarray, since Brad knows for a fact that he runs hands through his hair a lot when he's thinking. What he doesn't expect to see is Gabriel, dressed only in sweatpants—Nate's sweatpants, the same that Brad wore that first night, the ones with a small black stain from ink on the right knee—giving him a questioning look.

"Nate's in the shower," he informs him. "Do you want to come in or—"

It feels like a punch to his gut and leaves him with a sinking sensation, like he's falling into himself. He knows this one. Betrayal.

"No," Brad manages. His instincts kick in immediately, ignoring that more reasonable part of him which screams, _But it's Nate. He wouldn't do that, not Nate, not ever, and you know it_. "Just…"

"Well, do you want me to tell him something? Are you sure you don't want to come in? It's not what—"

"Don't tell him anything. Just…" Brad pushes the coaster into Gabriel's hands and leaves. He can't even see where he's headed, because everything goes black before his eyes. He feels sick and has to stop for a moment once he's outside. And then he runs.

He runs until he's back at his apartment, drenched in his own sweat and heaving, dark spots floating in front of his eyes, and he punches the wall so hard that the skin on his knuckles breaks. He doesn't scream, just grits his teeth so hard that his whole jaw aches.

He wonders if the paper was a lie, too.

* * *

  
"Saturday's off," he tells Ray, not looking up from the motherboard he's struggling with—the damned thing just won't work and Brad feels like throwing it across the room, watching it shatter into pieces, all those tiny parts flying in all directions. "Nate has to work on his thesis."

He can't deal with Ray and Walt, too, at least not right now. He's going to tell them eventually, once this suffocating feeling goes away. (It may take some time.) For now, this one lie is a small price to pay. And it might not even be a lie—maybe Nate is going to work on his thesis (one of them, or both) during the weekend. Maybe Gabriel will be there the whole time.

Ray rolls his eyes. "Tell your boyfriend to fucking live a little, will you? All this studying is gonna kill him one day, leaving you sad and miserable, and quite possibly homicidal, and, you know, homes, it's not gonna be good for anyone."

Brad closes his eyes just for a second before he replies, "I'll be sure to pass it on. Thank you for this invaluable insight into the matter, Ray."

Even if Person eyes him suspiciously after that and goes to Walt's office to have a whispered conversation with him, he doesn't say a thing.

Even if they suspect that something's wrong and that Brad's lying through his teeth, they don't pry, at least not yet.

In the afternoon, he goes straight home and doesn't pick up the phone when his mother calls and leaves him five messages on his voicemail. He doesn't pick up when the caller ID shows Katherine's number. It's already getting dark when he picks up his helmet, kicks his bike into high gear and doesn't get himself killed only by sheer luck, nothing else. He doesn't know if that's actually a good thing.

* * *

  
By the time Monday comes, there are seventy-three missed calls from Nate on his cell phone. He doesn't even bother to count those from his mother and sisters (and now Ruth is in on it, too, apparently) or those from Ray and Walt. He's also pretty sure there's a missed call from his landlord somewhere in there, but he has no intentions of checking if that's true.

It's just like Jess all over again, only this time it's worse. He didn't even know it could be. He's known Jess for years, after all, they were _together_ for years, not for a few days shy of a month, and shouldn't it hurt as much as possible, to be betrayed like that? Well, now it hurts more.

He should've known better than to trust anyone not to fuck him over—sooner or later everybody leaves, that's the only constant in all the variables of Brad's life. Nate chose to leave sooner rather than later, sparing Brad any further disappointment, bitterness and the feeling that he wasted so much of his time. Maybe he should be grateful for that.

After a shower so long that the water eventually starts to run cold, Brad takes out his bike and doesn't cast even one cursory glance at the tunnel leading to the subway station as he waits for the traffic lights to turn green. It's ten past eight, the train will arrive in three minutes, but Brad won't be on it this time, or ever again, for that matter.

At work, Ray has the morning off, since he needs to sort out some shit concerning his apartment (though Brad's sure that if Ray were to unexpectedly become homeless, Walt would take him in without so much as batting an eye), so it's only Brad and Walt, and if it's a bit too quiet without Ray's rambling, neither of them says anything. Walt stops by just once and opens his mouth as if to say something, but then thinks better of it and leaves Brad alone. In some way, it would be better if he stayed—it's easier to pretend if there's someone you have to pretend before.

Ray comes back shortly after two, bringing good news—he's allowed to stay in this absolutely disgusting shithole he calls home for another six months, unless there's a police intervention again (Ray still swears it wasn't his fault the last time it happened, that guy just wouldn't quit playing his retarded piece of shit techno music, so the only logical way to deal with that was to drown him out with Lady Gaga; the neighbors didn't appreciate that, apparently).

"Brad? Why the fuck wouldn't you pick up your goddamn phone when I called?" he tries, but then sees Walt shaking his head and lets it go. Brad glances at him and sees what looks like genuine worry, not Ray's usual mix of annoyance and well-disguised care.

It's already past four when Brad entrenches himself in the back room for good, computer parts lying on every available flat surface, effectively barring anyone from coming in. The door is half closed, so he can only hear that someone is talking to Ray, but the sound is too muffled to make out any details. A moment later, the door opens wide with a slight screech of the hinges.

To his credit, the motherboard he's holding doesn't smash into pieces at his feet, he just grips it so hard he's afraid he might break something with his bare hands. "Nate? What are you doing here?"

"The short guy who talks a lot told me I can find you back here."

"Oh, so you've met Ray. If you don't pay attention to his retarded rants, he usually shuts up after a while. Just a tip."

He's perfectly composed and even if something inside him dies at the sight of Nate who looks as if he didn't sleep at all for the last few days, it doesn't show on his face. Or at least he doesn't think so.

Then something occurs to Brad. He never told Nate in which store in the area he works, precisely.

"And how the fuck did you find me?"

Nate shrugs. "I looked until I did."

There's something twisting in Brad's stomach. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, Brad, that I looked up all the computer stores in the area that also provided repair services and checked all of them, one by one, since you wouldn't even tell me where the hell you work, exactly. There are sixteen of them, by the way. This one was number fourteen on the list."

_Jesus_, Brad thinks, still gripping the goddamn motherboard, even though he doesn't, strictly speaking, believe in Jesus (or in God, for that matter), and his muscles must've betrayed him at some point when he wasn't paying attention, because he can't move, only his heart is pounding against his ribs so hard that Nate must hear it for sure, there's no way he doesn't.

"Where's Gabriel?" he asks politely, and yes, maybe he is a fucking master of self-destruction, but his instincts are still DEFCON one and there's nothing he can do about it—it's automatic, like reloading a gun after firing a round.

"Do you think I'd go to all this trouble finding you just to inform you that, what, I'm fucking Gabriel now?" Nate looks him straight in the eye, his expression painfully open and hurt. "Do you really think so low of me? Because if you do, and if that's not going to change, just say so. It's going to spare us both some trouble and disappointment, because I can't do this anymore if you can't trust me. I tried, but how many times can you try and fail before you start to think that you don't have the strength to do that anymore? And it seems all I do is try and fail. So tell me."

Nate looks like he might be fighting back tears that threaten to spill, his eyes red and a bit glassy, but he just closes them for a moment, swallows hard, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, and when he finally looks at Brad again, he's the perfect picture of composure.

"Gabriel wasn't at my apartment because I decided to fuck you over at the most unexpected moment and sleep with him. He was at my apartment because a pipe burst in his bathroom and his own place was flooded, so I offered him a couch until they fix it. A fucking pipe, Brad. You left me over a burst pipe." He laughs, but the sound is broken and has nothing to do with mirth.

The thing is, Brad _knows_, just _knows_ that Nate is telling the truth, and it's harder to bear than any lie he could tell, because it means that this mess is entirely Brad's fault.

Nate's shoulders sag and he looks tired and resigned and crushed. Brad hates himself for being the sole reason for that.

"Well, aren't you going to say anything?" Nate asks, attempting to take a step towards Brad, but then he notices the trenches made of graphic cards, fans, motherboards, hard drives and chips, and stays in his place by the door.

Brad thinks of all the things he wants to say, like _I'm sorry_ and _I fucked up_ and _don't go_ and _I think I love you_, but the words get stuck on his tongue and all he can manage is, "I…" then he trails off, looking at Nate with his eyes wide open, hoping that his expression can convey all the things words cannot.

"I guess that's it, then," Nate says after Brad remains silent for a long while, and he sounds defeated, like he has no fight left in him. When he turns around to leave, Brad finds himself unable to breathe, his lungs dying a slow, fiery death with every breath he tries to take, and then he finally, finally moves, leaps forward to catch Nate by the wrist at the last moment. He's sure he destroyed a few of the computer parts lying on the floor, but he doesn't care.

"Wait," he says quietly, but in the silence that has fallen it sounds like a bomb going off. "I don't want this to end. I don't want you to go. Fuck, Nate, I…" He leans in until their foreheads touch and closes his eyes. Nate doesn't shy away from the touch and Brad can feel his unsteady breath tickling his neck on every exhale. Not so composed, then, but, fuck, neither is Brad.

He doesn't say _I love you_ just yet, it's too soon, but he says, "I want this to work between us. And I want to trust you." He hasn't even realized how much he wanted to be able to trust Nate until now.

"But?" Nate says, as if he's waiting for another reason why Brad can't do this.

"There's no _but_." Brad kisses him then, just a soft touch of lips with the barest hint of tongue when Nate sucks in a breath, opening his mouth to him, and Brad licks at the sensitive flesh, tipping Nate's face slightly more up. It's unhurried and almost gentle.

Brad backs him up against the wall and lingers there for a few moments, stealing kisses and tracing the lines of Nate's face, cupping his cheek and nipping at his jaw once he's able to tear his lips away from Nate's mouth. When he finally takes a step back and looks around with a slightly hazy gaze, he notices a rather stunned girl looking at their assortment of external hard drives, who smiles and gives him a thumbs up before walking away, giggling quietly.

He feels more than sees it when Nate huffs out a laugh, leaning against Brad's cheek. "I don't think she minded it too much," he whispers into his ear.

"I don't think she did," Brad agrees, then adds, "Will you wait for me? I have a few things I need to finish and then we can go."

Nate nods, and when Brad looks over his shoulder on his way to the back room, he's still there, sitting on the wooden steps Ray uses sometimes to reach the highest shelf. And he's not going anywhere.

* * *

  
Brad's picking up and putting away all the parts that are still lying scattered on the floor when he hears Ray say, "Yo, subway guy, listen up. We're gonna have a little chat."

Brad's surprised that Walt managed to keep Person quiet for so long, but then again, Walt has his methods. Brad's not sure if he wants to know what these methods consist of, exactly.

Ray drags the slightly surprised Nate away where he thinks Brad won't hear them—he's wrong (not exactly a huge surprise there, that's been known to happen, even if Ray's version differs somewhat significantly from what other people think about his supposed infallibility) and Brad ends up hearing every single word from his place out back. Sometimes Person really underestimates how fucking loud he is.

"Get this," Ray says, "I know Brad better than his own goddamn mother… Okay, so maybe that's not entirely true, but still, the point stands, and the point is that I know Brad Colbert pretty fucking well. And I know that it may seem like he's all tough and unbreakable and shit, but he's not. After his whore of an ex fucked him over, and I assume you've already heard the story from Brad himself, since you don't seem surprised, I was there to pick up the pieces and fuck me, it wasn't pretty. Like, at all. It was a fucking mess. _He_ was a fucking mess. And there's no way he's gonna go through this shit again, no fucking way. So if you hurt him, if you fucking break his heart, if you even _think_ of breaking his heart, I'll find you, and I'll fuck you up, and don't think I won't, cause I'm one badass motherfucker, even if I don't look like it. So there you go. Got it?"

"I'm pretty sure I did, yes." When Nate speaks, Brad can hear a hint of smile in his voice and he imagines the corners of Nate's mouth tugging up slightly, a wide grin threatening to escape. "But I assure you, I have no intention whatsoever of breaking Brad's heart. Ever."

* * *

  
Brad isn't sure how and at which point exactly the spare helmet ended up in the trunk of his bike, but it's there when he opens it. He hands the helmet to Nate and hops onto the seat, telling him to hold on tight. Nate does, placing his hands on Brad's waist, and Brad can feel how warm they are even through his leather jacket. It's like a total sensory overload—he can feel Nate all over him where he's leaning against Brad's back, breathing into the crook of his neck, he can smell his aftershave and something different hidden underneath the expensive cologne (a gift from his parents, most likely), something that is distinctly Nate.

Once they're on the freeway, Brad speeds up, the wind in his ears drowning out everything else apart from the steady roar of his bike. He doesn't take the exit that leads to Nate's apartment and he can tell exactly when Nate realizes where they're headed, because he tightens his grip around Brad's waist and leans against his shoulder, his whole body relaxing against Brad.

There are countless things Brad wants to do to Nate right now and the memory of his face as he's coming apart under Brad's touch is the only thing that gets him through this ride. As soon as they're at his apartment (which he, fortunately, doesn't have to share with anyone), Brad shucks off his jacket, pins Nate to the closed door and drops to his knees in one fluid movement, unbuttoning Nate's jeans at the same time. When the stupid buttons won't cooperate, he all but rips the jeans open.

"Lose the jacket," he manages before he closes his hand around Nate's dick and then takes him in his mouth in one go, breathing through his nose, focused and intent on giving Nate the best blowjob of his life.

Usually, he enjoys being on the receiving end more, but right now he just can't get enough of this, his world narrowed down to Nate's scent, taste and feel under his fingers and on his tongue. He looks up through his eyelashes, sees that Nate observes him, too, observes his every move, every reaction, and when their eyes lock, Brad finds himself unable to look away. He sucks a bit harder, then, takes him a bit deeper until he can feel how the muscles at the back of his throat are fluttering around the tip of Nate's cock, but he fights for as long as he can and then pulls back just to lick around the head, jerking Nate off with a steady hand where he doesn't reach with his mouth.

Nate moans and grips Brad's shoulders, leaving crescent-shaped marks when he tries to steady himself as his legs threaten to give in; his knees suddenly buckle under him when Brad does a little trick with his tongue, and Nate swears, banging his head against the wood. Brad moves one of his hands up to rest on Nate's abdomen, supporting him, and he can feel the strain in his muscles as Nate tries to stay upright, while his other hand caresses Nate's hip and the sensitive skin on the inside of his thigh.

"Fuck, Christ… Brad, fuck," Nate whispers, his voice hoarse and lower than usual, and then he arches his back, seeking more contact with Brad's mouth, so Brad happily obliges, taking him deep and sucking hard until Nate's reduced to an incoherent mess of moans and whispered obscenities and little gasps and hazy looks from under his half-closed eyelids that make Brad grow even harder in his jeans, because, fuck, there isn't one thing about this situation that's not impossibly hot.

"Come on," Brad rasps out, his throat tender and aching, urging Nate on before taking him in his mouth again and twirling his tongue around the head, picking up the pace until he can feel Nate's whole body tensing up, his fingers clawing at Brad's shoulders and then Nate's coming, hard, with his eyes screwed shut and his teeth biting his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, and he's beautiful like this, with his hair and clothes in a total disarray, his t-shirt riding up and his jeans bunched around his thighs, flushed and panting as he rides out his orgasm, Brad's hand stroking him right through the aftershocks.

Brad stands up, slowly but smoothly, as he wipes his mouth, slick with spit and Nate's come, with the back of his hand, and he kisses him, hard and deep, fucking his mouth with his tongue until all he can hear are the small moans that Nate makes in the back of his throat. Then it turns out that Nate's not the only one moaning. It surprises Brad a bit—he hasn't even realized how far gone he is by now.

They're both breathing hard when Nate leans in and whispers into Brad's ear, "I want you to fuck me," as he palms Brad's dick through his jeans, giving him just enough friction to tease, but not enough to get off, though Brad still has to close his eyes and grit his teeth in order not to lose it right there, right now. "Come on, Brad," Nate says, pressing his hand harder against Brad's erection, and then he bites at his earlobe, scraping his teeth against the sensitive flesh. "Come on, please…"

"Bed," Brad says simply, because words don't seem to work the way they usually do at the moment, tugging at the hem of Nate's shirt; then he leads him to his bedroom and pushes him onto the bed, getting the lube and a condom from the nightstand as fast as he can. Nate strips from his clothes in a few efficient movements, and Brad can't help but admire the way his muscles ripple under his skin as he throws the shirt away and then shifts back onto the mattress.

Nate watches him the whole time, while Brad warms up the lube in his hands and then opens him up with long, capable fingers, Nate's lips forming a little surprised _o_ and his knees falling apart even wider when Brad finds that one spot which makes Nate writhe under him and his dick twitch again already, but that's when Brad pulls back to unwrap the condom and apply more lube, and he can hear Nate gasp at the loss of contact.

Brad's positive that Nate watches him, too, as he's fighting his own orgasm, buried deep inside Nate, thrusting in and out at a torturously slow pace, alternating between gritting his teeth and leaving hot, open-mouthed kisses wherever he can reach, but he doesn't risk looking at Nate's face to make sure, because he knows that if he did and saw his red lips parted slightly and his eyes focused on him, it'd be all over in an instant.

"Brad," Nate whispers, and Brad bites his lip to keep himself from coming. "Brad, come on, look at me. Let it go."

He does, eventually, and it's just as he predicted—an explosion of red somewhere behind his eyes and a buzzing sound in his ears, and Nate, Nate everywhere around him.

Afterwards, he thinks that maybe he lost about ten seconds to the black.

They take a shower together, just because they can, and because Brad's bathroom wasn't designed to serve the seven dwarfs rather than human beings, and they end up in the kitchen afterwards, eating toasts and drinking beer that isn't Budweiser, for a change. After they're finished and Brad puts the dishes away, Nate corners him against the sink and kisses his shoulder blade, pressing a hand to his spine, his fingers ghosting over the arch of his vertebrae that protrude slightly through his skin, skimming over the tattoo on his lower back.

They eventually fall asleep together, Nate's body warm against Brad, Brad's fingers curled around Nate's forearm. He could get used to this feeling.

* * *

  
He wakes up when the sun starts shining right into his eyes. He squints and clears his throat—it feels dry and his lips are still tingling. Beside him, Nate starts to stir in his sleep and tries to fight the inevitable awakening by burying his head in the crook of Brad's neck, but it buys him only a couple more minutes, then he opens his eyes and stifles a yawn.

Nate leans in to kiss Brad, but when his face hovers inches over Brad's and all he has to do is lower his head a bit, he casts a glance at the digital watch placed on the nightstand and nearly tumbles out of the bed. "Fuck. I'm late," he says, fumbling for his pants frantically. "I'm late and I'm dead. I need to catch a train to the campus, like, five minutes ago."

He has his shirt only halfway on, his hair is sticking out in all directions, and he still can't find his underwear—and Brad would laugh, really, only Nate has this look in his eyes, the one that makes it impossible to laugh at him if one has even a shred of decency left.

"Come back here." Brad reaches out and grabs Nate's wrist instead, his skin soft and sleep-warm, and tugs at it, dragging him back to bed. Nate's lips are warm, too, pliant under Brad's touch, and he kisses him lazily, as if they have all the time in the world. (And maybe, just maybe they do.) Then he moves back to stare at Nate, who looks positively debauched, all red, plump lips, flushed skin and disheveled hair, kisses him briefly once again and says with his mouth against his neck, "Don't worry. My bike's down at the garage. I'll give you a ride."


End file.
